How do I respond to this? ("It didn't 'just happen!")

Posted this on Facebook with the text "No one can read that and not think that science is friggin' awesome," and got the following as a response. I don't know how to respond to this respectfully but informatively (I'm new at this) but I feel like I absolutely have to because this person frequently takes advantage of the "I'm a Christian so I can tell you EXACTLY how I feel but since you're an atheist, stfu!" crap.

"Very interesting, and beautiful! The complexity and awesomeness of science is so thorouhly amazing, that it always brings me back to the Creator of it all......God!! It couldnt just happen, No! It is immensely fantastic, and terrific, so it couldnt just be here...No! I love the beauty and how interesting it is, which always makes me want to be thankful, and I can only thank one Person...God! It all points us to Him! Thanks for hearing me share my piece! I appreciate science deeply! ♥"

I do find it ironic that the very short article even said that this is how life originated in our own system as well and yet she says that it couldn't happen without God. Anyone who believes the Bible cannot possibly "appreciate science." Argh.

Replies to This Discussion

The star erupting in that photo was formed billions of years ago - billions of years before the earth even existed. It was formed when trillions upon trillions of metric tons of gases condensed under immense gravitational forces, igniting a inferno so unimaginably large that the earth, compared to it, is not even a speck.

The ancient mythology of which you speak defines the deity of whom you speak as creating the earth 6,000 years ago and THEN putting 'the stars' up, as an afterthought, to mark our seasons here on earth. How can you possibly draw a relationship between the two?

I find the comparison akin to drawing parallels between Stephen Hawking and Jack, who traded his family's grocery money for magic beans.

I usually follow it up with a link to the video "Science Saved My Soul" by Phillennes on YouTube and that typically quiets the religious types because it explains in such a beautiful way how wonderful the universe is when you look at it in a purely scientific non-religious way.

Just say the bible claims the universe is roughly 6,500 years old and that the light from that star took millions of years to get here due to it's vast distance from earth. Also say science is based on testable explanations and predictions about the universe, will religion is based on a book written 1,800 to 2,000 years ago with no evidence or back-up and contradicts many well known facts in science, sorry but they don't go together!

They use multiple periods for pauses, which means they have already proven with just a quick visual inspection that they aren't worth your time. Personally, I get how you can be aggravated at that, but they aren't necessarily laying a smack down on you, nor telling you to STFU. They are just voicing their own albeit ignorant opinion.

If you want to be informative, then point out how stars form and why they go nova. Let this person know that it is a natural process that needs no intervention in much the same way that erosion and sedimentation just happens. God has no need to directly control how a riverbank winds and changes over time or how rocks become worn down. It's the same with stars. Stars on a grand timescale create heavier elements due to fusion and then scatter them back out into the universe through supernovas (as seen in the dust erupting from the star). It's a process that in some ways can be likened to erosion and sedimentation, which takes material from one place and moves it to another. It's simply how things work. She (I'm guessing it's a she) may come back with a retort like, "Yeah, isn't God awesome?" or, "it all goes according to his plan!" which is the ultimate sign that she is irreparably damaged, but maybe you'll cause her to think for a moment that maybe God doesn't control every aspect of life. Sometimes things just work on their own. That realization that God isn't necessary for things to work in the world was the impetus for me to (eventually) break from Christianity and for a brief time considered myself a deist.

Argument from personal incredulity. Just because they can't comprehend how it could happen naturally doesn't prove goddidit.

If the universe is too immensely fantastic and complex to happen naturally necessitating a creator, wouldn't that creator necessarily be even more immensely fantastic and complex? Making things more complicated doesn't help solve the equation.

We don't know everything about the universe, but there certainly isn't a god shaped hole in what we don't understand.

There isn't any evidence that we were created by gods and yet there is plenty of evidence that we invented gods.

Supernaturalizing the human experience makes it impossible to understand and value humanity's place in the natural environment.

Suppose we could take our observations of the universe and simplify them all into one hypothetical equation like this:

2x^2 + 4x - 30 = 0

Solving for x is rather simple.

But religious people freak out and complain that we didn't account for god. Suppose we humoured these people by introducing god into the equation so

Let y = god2x^2 + 4x - 30 = 0

Where do we put y in the equation? We must include it on both sides. If we don't then the equation no longer represents what we've observed! So we're left with

2x^2 + 4x - 30 + y = y

We can still solve for x and the simplest way is to just immediately take y out of the equation. We could never isolate and solve for y because y-y obliterates itself into, appropriately, nothingness.

So why should we include y (god) in our explanation and observation of the universe when it doesn't make any sense to do so? It only needlessly complicates matters. The universe behaves exactly as we would expect it to without gods.

"Oh, I have to get this person to appreciate the value of science & reason.

Screw that, just have fun.

Don't be a teacher (as many as these replies suggest). Be a student. Be a person who WANTS to understand. Hell. practice a bit of subterfuge: be a person that WANTS to believe. You just have a couple of questions about inconsistencies.....

If someone approaches me to proselytize, I toy with 'em, Play with their head.